ROCKFORD — Rockford Fire Department officials say they are investigating what went wrong Monday when it took 36 minutes to transport Andrew Barth eight blocks down Charles Street to SwedishAmerican Hospital where he died.

Rockford firefighter-paramedics fought a losing battle to keep the 21-year-old alive after he was shot near the intersection of Pearl Street and Hutchins Avenue. But as they worked to administer advanced life support, an ambulance they thought was coming from OSF Saint Anthony Medical Center never arrived.

William Hintz, Winnebago County chief deputy coroner, said that Barth had been shot once in the chest and that the bullet had struck major blood vessels.

“He was bleeding out instantly,” Hintz said.

Hintz added, however, that only an emergency physician could say for sure whether getting Barth to the hospital faster would have saved his life. No one from SwedishAmerican could immediately be reached for comment.

Rockford Fire Chief Derek Bergsten said all of the city’s ambulances were busy at 1:16 p.m. when the emergency call about the shooting came in, so the 911 Center requested a private ambulance. OSF Lifeline Ambulance, which is part of OSF HealthCare, accepted the call.

As paramedics worked to keep Barth alive, Bergsten said, they wondered where the ambulance was. They tried to call Lifeline on the radio after about 15 minutes.

“We tried to get a hold of them on the air, couldn’t raise them on the air, and then we heard another ambulance go en route from Lifeline,” Bergsten said. “At that time, we said we are going to pull one of our own ambulances.”

That was at 1:35 p.m., 19 minutes after the initial call went out.

It took seven minutes for the Rockford ambulance to arrive and another seven minutes to load Barth into the ambulance.

It took just three minutes for the ambulance to reach SwedishAmerican.

Barth was declared dead by emergency room personnel at 2:09 p.m.

“We strive to have a unit on scene within eight minutes,” Bergsten said. “We did not make our benchmark on that call.”

On average, Rockford’s seven ambulances are all occupied on calls at the same time at least once a day, causing the department to rely on one of five private ambulance companies for contracted service. Before the city’s ambulance fleet was bumped up from five to seven last June, outside ambulance companies were called up to six times a day, Bergsten said.

The fire department ambulance that ultimately made the run had just been freed up, Bergsten said. The others were occupied at a nursing home, with sick calls, a car accident and other incidents.

Fire Department commanders are investigating to determine what went wrong, Bergsten said.

Average ambulance response time for the city is 7 minutes, 48 seconds. Rockford typically sends a fire engine and ambulance to an emergency scene so that medical attention gets to a potential patient as quickly as possible.

Bergsten hopes to speak with Lifeline officials within the next week about the 19 minutes that passed between the time the emergency call came in to the time Rockford canceled Lifeline’s service and sent an ambulance of its own.

“We’re definitely disappointed,” Bergsten said. “This is a service that we provide to the citizens. We take this very seriously. That’s why we’re looking into it.”

OSF spokesman Mike Robinson said the incident had been discussed with the fire department, but it’s too early to tell what the next steps will be.

Lifeline issued a statement confirming that it does back up ambulance service for the Rockford Fire Department, as do other local private ambulance providers, and that its average response time is eight minutes.

“However, those times can vary greatly depending on many different factors,” the statement reads. “We do not comment on specific patients nor the events of specific cases, but in this instance, Rockford Fire called us off the transport because they had a unit closer to the scene.”

The chief said even though a fire engine was on scene, Barth obviously needed medical treatment and could not be transported in the truck because it’s built like a car, with seats and no medical equipment inside. There is no place to put an injured person safely inside, and any fire engine transport of Barth would have violated state law, Bergsten said.